A Probability of Being

It's a new year, and I've got new fiction coming up! I'll be in New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color , edited by the inimitable Nisi Shawl! It'll be published by Solaris Books in March!  I encounter LeVar Burton once more as he's written the introduction of this book, and I'm sharing pages with some of the most exciting writers right now, such as  Rebecca Roanhorse , and Darcie Little Badger  and SFF stalwarts such as Tobias Buckell and Andrea Hairston! Here's the table of contents: Foreword, LeVar Burton The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex, Tobias Buckell Deer Dancer, Kathleen Alcalá The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations, Minsoo Kang Come Home to Atropos, Steven Barnes The Fine Print, Chinelo Onwualu unkind of mercy, Alex Jennings Burn the Ships, Alberto Yáñez The Freedom of the Shifting Sea, Jaymee Goh Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire, E. Lily Yu Blood and Bells, Karin Lowachee Give Me Your Black ...

I'm proud to announce that I'm part of Beneath Ceaseless Skies ' Tenth Anniversary Special Issue !  My story, " Magic Potion Behind-the-Mountain ," takes place in a setting that I dreamed up during a bout of dengue fever that a mosquito gave me sometime in 2014. I'd gone home for a high school friend's wedding, was feeling a little ill when I got home, and then had a full-blown fever the next day. Whenever I'm sick with a fever, I mostly just stay in bed and drink a lot of warm water, all though the day and night. And, well, the water goes right through you. But you have to drink it! Hydration is important when you are sick. I wasn't sure if it was dengue, since I tend to get a violent fever once a year or so, but since it was in late December, which is mosquito season, there was a chance that it was. Dengue fever tends to run its course in two weeks. It's referred to as "breakbone fever" because that's what it feels lik...

My latest short story, "A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine," is now out in GLASS AND GARDEN: SOLARPUNK SUMMERS from World Weaver Press ! If solar-powered airships, crocodile farms, and happily-meddling family members sound like your jam, buy the book and support the anthology!  I'm also participating in a series of blog posts at the World Weaver Press blog ! So watch that space for me!

Mythic Delirium 4.3 is now live! I'm honoured to be the featured story for January 2018, kicking off this Gregorian year on a good note, even if the story itself is quite dark.  " When the Bough Breaks " combines different things I learned in childhood--rhymes and stories of forest spirits--with the memory of the Highland Towers collapse in 1993. Parts of the plot were also directly inspired by dreams I had during a brief period when I kept sleeping wonky, waking myself up with pins and needles in my back.  I'm not used to writing horror, and it is indeed one of my least read genres: when it comes to good horror, I scare easily. Growing up in Malaysia we have a lot of ghost stories and a laundry list of ways to not piss off forest spirits, and our spirits tend to be less jump-scare and more ambient creepiness, so I thought I would try my hand at it.  I hope you like it!

'Tis the season!  I was not very prolific in 2017, because I spent a lot of it finishing my dissertation, but I still managed some things! "Eruption" in Anathema Magazine #2  is a letter of a long-dead woman to her younger brother, who himself is in the twilight of his life, recounting the bloody history of their community. I jokingly refer to it as my #killallmen story but I was inspired by Robert Sapolsky's observations of the Keekorok Babboon Troop . In addressing the very concept of genociding an entire gender in order to start fresh, I also had to think through trauma, from abuse, war, systemic oppression, and how to dramatically transform all of that in a single generation.  "The Reset" in  Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation , edited by  Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland, published by Upper Rubber Boot Press is not available for online reading, but if you would like to read it, email me. I considered the conseq...

Mythic Delirium has just announced their mock cover for their 4.3 issue! The art is by Ruth Sanderson , based on Beth Cato 's poem "The Body Made"!  My short story "When the Bough Breaks" will be available in the January 2018 segment of the web issue. It is based on the Highland Towers collapse of 1993, in my home state of Selangor, Malaysia. This was the first major catastrophe I can remember being widely-televised--Berita Terkini, which usually ran for about 5 minutes every couple of hours, kept popping up on seemingly every single commercial break at this time as more survivors and dead were found.  In this short story, I tried to evoke the feeling of creepiness that some luxury condos in natural areas have, partly as a result of not being wholly lived in quite yet, partly because wooded areas have landed spirits who are often not happy that humans are moving in! The characters run a gamut of different races and ages. One of the opening scenes is...

by Alan Bao It's the day of the Hungry Ghost Festival! I went to the Thien Hau Temple on Sunday with my friend S. Qiouyi Lu and Nilah Magruder . There were monks chanting for most of the holiday weekend. It was also very hot, because there was a heat wave in Southern California (and about 7000 acres were burning near LA).  Coincidentally, it's also the first Tuesday of the month, which means my Lightspeed Magazine story " The Last Cheng Beng Gift " is now up for free reading!! I also talk about writing the story in the Author Spotlight . 

The September issue of Lightspeed Magazine is now available for purchase ! I'm really excited about it for several reasons. First, the incredible cover by Alan Bao: It's a smaller version of the illustration he did for my short story, "The Last Cheng Beng Gift"!! It's my first ever story to become the cover story for a magazine, and hopefully it won't be the last!  Secondly, I share an incredible table of contents... I'm in this issue with stories written by Genevieve Valentine and Tobias S. Buckell (who writes incredibly fun Caribbean space opera!!) and the non-fiction is by some of my favourite fiction writers, Amal El-Mohtar, Theodora Goss, and Joseph Allen Hill!! Not only that (sub-second-point??), while my story goes live in the first week of September, my Clarion classmate Giovanni de Feo's story, "Ugo" goes live in the last week of September! That's like, a werejelly sandwich!!! Gio read his draft of "Ugo...

Anathema Magazine #2 is now up, which means my latest short story, "Eruption" is now up and available for reading online!  I wrote "Eruption" in Week 3 of Clarion, under Andy Duncan. For some reason all the stories that day were somewhat of a similar theme: mine is essentially a misandrist utopia (I call it my #killallmen story); another classmate wrote a misandrist dystopia (in which boys are locked in a giant enclosure for a certain time); and a third wrote a somewhat misogynist attempt to establish a utopia free of women (but in ways that also harmed young men). It was a day .  This story combines two ideas I had floating about: the story of a woman slowly succumbing to mental degradation, which surfaces a lot of terrible memories about the founding of her city, and a story of an underground slave people rising up to destroy their oppressors. It is inspired partly by this 1906 illustration by William Balfour Ker  and a dream I had: with added ...

As I publish more, it's been fun to look back on my old fiction to see what I used to do that I don't anymore, what concerned me then and how that has changed. So I thought I'd post some old old and possibly terribly embarrassing fiction over time. Today's story is "The Changeling," inspired by Asimovian robots and the question of humanity and sentience in artificial intelligence. Further ruminations on the story afterwards.

Interfictions Online , a journal of interstitial arts, has released their latest issue! This issue includes an interview with Tade Thompson by Sofia Samatar, poetry by Neile Graham and Jeanne Hall Gailey , as well as a new short story by Nino Cipri !  I'm so pleased that my story, " Mana Langkah Pelangi Terakhir? (Where is the Rainbow's Last Step?) " is in such great company! "Langkah Pelangi" is inspired by a dream I had in which I found a friend in a jail far away from home, and the last I saw of her was in a sampan punting off to sea. I get home to discover that she has died, and been mythologized. And I thought, wouldn't that be kinda crazypants to live in a work where the collective imagination could have so much power, that a dead person could become a myth that never dies ? What if that was literal? I had a lot of trouble with this story. It bounced off a couple of places, and each time I revised it, and then revised it some more upo...

I don't usually announce when I've signed a contract, and tend to announce future publication news only when I have a Table of Contents to share, but it's coming into the last quarter of 2016, and I'm putting together my CV and had to count up my forthcoming publications. The other day I thought I had three. But no, upon further reflection, I actually have four.  "Mana Langkah Pelangi Terakhir," translated one way into "Where Is The Rainbow's Last Step," will be out in the Fall issue of Interfictions Online . It is about what might happen in our world where, if enough people dream the same thing and relate the same stories enough times with enough conviction, even if it isn't true or possible, it will come true. Our heroine is a journalist trying to make sense of this in light of a colleague's re-appearance. I tend to forget about this one because it's already fall so I kind of think it's already out, except it's not, just...

My short story "Crocodile Tears" is now live at the Lightspeed Magazine website !!! In addition, I got a little author spotlight as well ! Thanks to my editor Wendy Wagner, and to EIC John Joseph Adams for publishing this!!

The latest issue of Lightspeed Magazine, containing my short story "Crocodile Tears" is now live! If you have a subscription you'll be able to read it immediately, of course. If not, you can subscribe to this fine magazine or buy it as an individual ebook ! There is also a schedule for when it's released on the main website --"Crocodile Tears" is out on the 20th of September and I shall be sure to post a direct link to it as soon as I can! In the mean time, you can enjoy other marvelous stories in the issue ^_^

I'm pleased to announce that I'm in the September 2016 issue of Lightspeed Magazine ! I sold the story last year but generally refrain from announcing anything official until I see a table of contents. And wow! I'm sharing a TOC with An Owomoyela and Nisi Shawl! Also Maria Dhavana Headley, who I had the chance to participate in a class Skype session with while I was at Clarion!  My story, "Crocodile Tears," will be familiar to attendees of the reading I did with Nisi Shawl and Sam J. Miller this past ICFA. It's a combination of two of my favourite Malay folktales, the story of Si Tenggang, and the story of the old woman and the crocodiles. This will be the second story this year with crocodiles who are not mean and nasty (the first being " Anak Sungai " at Truancy). I hope you enjoy "Crocodile Tears"!

Neil Clarke, publisher of Clarkesworld , is editor of the Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume One from Night Shade Books this year. He selected a range to be published in the anthology, and since it apparently doesn't encompass everything he wanted, he also has a recommended reading list for best science fiction of 2015. " Liminal Grid " is on that list!

As one of the Author Spotlights for AnomalyCon 2016, con chair Kronda Seibert invited me to participate in the AnomalyCards, a set of postcards distributed at random, to be traded with other attendees for the whole set. Writers would contribute a flash fic, and artists would illustrate them. This sounded like a fine idea, so of course I sent in a thing! Here is the result!

So now that " Liminal Grid " has been up for a few months now, I guess I should talk about some of the things I wrote into the story that are very personal to me!

At UC Riverside, there are two different science fiction reading groups for graduate students, one out of the English department which is more theory-based, and one out of the Creative Writing department which is more craft-based. I attended the latter one, and we had a writing prompt last month: a flash fic, 500 words, on the keyword "dinosaurs."  Because of a variety of reasons I didn't get around to writing my dinosaur flash fic until the meeting itself, and while everyone talked around me, I quickly typed up some 483 words. I had the idea for the first part most of the month, but didn't know how the rest of it would pan out. But I knew I wanted to think through evolution, and generational change. Here it is!

My friend Patricia posted a challenge to a writing group I'm part of: What does your past or future Malaysia look like, 50-60 years from today? Write it as a story or a poem, both works. Bonus Points: If your character(s) speak in Manglish or variations thereof Double Bonus Points: If your setting has magic/future tech Triple Bonus Points: If it's Malaysia in outer space WITHOUT referencing politics